AOPA Update Nov 2008

[Mike Cross]

A few points for discussion from Pat Malone, Editor of GA Magazine. Have fun!


AOPA UPDATE, NOVEMBER 2008

Making work
Has the CAA not got enough to do? It’s sending letters to owners threatening to ground aircraft if they do not increase their insurance premiums to take account of exchange rate fluctuations. It wants proof that they have paid more as the pound fell, or proof that the aircraft is grounded. AOPA says it’s daft. The EU mandates third party insurance of three million ‘SDRs’ for the average light single. An SDR is based on the gold price as valued against a basket of currencies and it’s recalculated every day by the IMF. When the pound was strong, everybody was hopelessly over-insured but nobody got a letter from the CAA about it. Now the pound is weak, some may not have enough cover to satisfy the letter of the law, but claims would be paid in sterling, so the balance would be maintained. Insurance companies calculate SDR values when you renew your policy and say there’s no point recalculating between payments. AOPA says three million SDRs is an arbitrary number invented by a bureaucrat, and what we have here is one bureaucracy playing another bureaucracy’s game. It is seeking an explanation from the CAA and can suggest cost-saving personnel changes at the authority if they’ve run out of useful work.

EASA-FCL
IAOPA-Europe has collated a Europe-wide response to EASA’s Flight Crew Licensing proposals. Some of EASA’s ideas are good – the PPL instructor will return, and they will again adopt the ICAO medical standards abandoned by the JAA. But some of their proposals are dire. They want to get the N-reg out of Europe, which will mean you’ll be unable to use an FAA Instrument Rating. There are several other proposals with which AOPA has issues – full details in the December issue of General Aviation.

Part M charges
Many engineers are charging fees of between a few hundred pounds and £2,500 to cover the cost of EASA’s Part M, sub-part G maintenance requirements. Some say they have done eight man-weeks work to get approvals and far more to create detailed new documents on every aircraft they service. The true ongoing cost won’t be known until all aircraft have had Annual Review Certificates for a year. AOPA is in discussions with engineers to establish the facts. In the meantime, it’s worth shopping around.

ELT change
All ELTs and PLBs must be operating on 406 mHz by February 2009, after which the satellites stop monitoring the 121.5 mHz frequency. AOPA believes every pilot should buy the best ELT or PLB he or she can afford.

Language, language…Got an FAA licence? If so, have you got the stamp to say you are proficient in English? If not, you could be operating illegally. To satisfy ICAO rules, the FAA will certify your competence with a stamp, no questions asked. Some European countries now want to see the stamp. If you’re a Serbo-Croat with three words of English and the stamp, you’re legal, but if you’re English born and bred and you don’t have the stamp, you’re not.
*Full details on all these stories on AOPA: Home Page (http://www.aopa.co.uk) and in December’s General Aviation

[Johnm]

As far as English proficiency is concerned I'm just going to carry my 1965 GCE O Level Grade 1 certificate and tell 'em it trumps everything else:E

Moreover I'm going to insist in communicating in very long words and challenge them to understand me:E

[Fright Level]

Moreover I'm going to insist in communicating in very long words and challenge them to understand me

A lot of domestic US pilots and many of their ATCO's might have English proficiency, but they sure don't use standard RT procedures!

Thanks for the update and link Socal. I like the bit "the cost to the airman will be $2". It's the first thing I will have paid to the FAA for my licences and yet I've thrown hundreds, if not thousands, into the CAA for the same services!

[Pace]

They want to get the N-reg out of Europe, which will mean you’ll be unable to use an FAA Instrument Rating. There are several other proposals with which AOPA has issues – full details in the December issue of General Aviation.

Maybe they should look at why so many are forced down the FAA track. I fail to understand how they can stipulate N reg aircraft and ban FAA IRs from being used over Europe. A mass of aircraft fly over Europe every day of the week on foreign reg and licences. You could not just not acknowlege the licences.

Surely all they could do is to ban residents of European countries from using non JAA licences and that would be discrimination pure and simple.
What would happen with IOM reg aircraft.

Any of these licensing issues should be based on safety. Far from there being any negative safety issues involved using foreign licences there are positive safety issues in holding an IR never mind where it comes from and it is the regulators own failings which should be highlighted.

Burocracy gone mad.

Pace

[IO540]

Maybe they should look at why so many are forced down the FAA track. I fail to understand how they can stipulate N reg aircraft and ban FAA IRs from being used over Europe. A mass of aircraft fly over Europe every day of the week on foreign reg and licences. You could not just not acknowlege the licences.That's right - EASA cannot stop "genuine foreigners" flying into Europe.

Surely all they could do is to ban residents of European countries from using non JAA licences and that would be discrimination pure and simple.
What would happen with IOM reg aircraft.IIRC, the ICAO word is "national" which means a citizenship. But there is no such thing as an "EU citizen" so EASA has adopted the word "resident". It's a bit moot since EASA can force every member state to implement its regs, anyway. ICAO does allow a member state to ban its citizens exercising the privileges of a foreign license in its airspace.

Any of these licensing issues should be based on safety. Far from there being any negative safety issues involved using foreign licences there are positive safety issues in holding an IR never mind where it comes from and it is the regulators own failings which should be highlighted.Safety doesn't come into it at all. It is 100% politics. But that is a good thing, not a bad thing. If there was a valid safety case, things would look bleak indeed. As it is, it comes down to lobbying by people and bodies with the right connections.

There is no point in speculating what the airframe proposal will contain as it is due out any day now, but it will be interesting and suprising if they actually ban N-reg airframes. The only way to do that is to impose long term parking limits, and that has been proposed twice (France and the UK) and dropped like a red hot potato as soon as it got elevated above the level of the "Cambridge Arts graduate civil servant". It appears just about impossible to draft regs which would work. It is possible with cars but they "benefit" from a highly organised, ever present and almost water tight surveillance network (the police :) ) - with planes there isn't the infrastructure for this kind of monitoring, and who would set it up and pay for it?

My money would be on a local maintenance oversight, which would satisfy the frequent (if unbased) European-intellectual-emotional objections, centred on the statistically utterly bogus (but often repeated by the axe grinders) assertion that foreign reg planes are not maintained. In this game, the key is to identify the unhappy dogs and work out which piece of meat to throw them, and you don't want to throw them your best pieces; not this early on, anyway. The political players in EASA (I have met some) are very very savvy. (Unlike Eurocontrol who are basically clue-less).

The already-out licensing proposal is going to be the worst, IMHO, but is sure to be a moving target for the next few years.

[Johnm]

There are clearly opportunities for the increase of dual nationality here, nice little earner for an island community....

[IO540]

A dual nationality would not appear to be of any help.

If EASA hung this coat on pilot citizenship, you could revoke your EU-country citizenship, and buy a Bolivian passport :) You would have to watch it though because you would lose your right of abode here, so a marriage to an EU citizen might be in order :)

But EASA is hanging this on pilot residence, which is both more difficult and more easy to mess with. It could be residence for tax purposes maybe - this (should it become law one day) will need to be clarified. But many "working" light jet pilots will not have to worry because they "move about" anyway. And wealthy people have multiple residences anyway (or none...).

Personally I think debating this is fun but pointless as a learning exercise because the whole proposal is so totally nutty it is bound to change.

[Squeegee Longtail]

"and they will again adopt the ICAO medical standards abandoned by the JAA."

What does this bit mean?

[AC-DC]

Bit more to this for European pilots who have a FAA certificate based on their foreign (e.g. European license).
See this document from the FAA on the process:
http://www.faa.gov/other_visit/aviat.../info08012.pdf

I realsie that some of you will complain that having the Euro license removes the need to comply but this FAA document makes it clear that you need to get the replacement FAA certificate if you are acting as PIC using that 'based on' FAA certificate.


I read the FAA document but on my FAA based on license it says:
"Based on and valid only when accompanied by UK pilot licence number XXXX. All limitations and restrictions on UK pilot licence apply".

My UK PPL is endorsed as proficiant hence my FAAbased on is the same.

[cessnapete]

I have been trying to comply with this FAA requirement. I contacted the London FAA International Field Office as directed by the FAA requirements. They had no idea what I was talking about! After some thought, I was told that as I am foreign I would probably need to travel to USA to get my CPL/IR re-issued with the language stamp.
They are now checking with their New York office.
Watch this space.